


Drinking with Intent

by notbrianna



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Deaf Clint Barton, M/M, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2593001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbrianna/pseuds/notbrianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after the Battle of New York Clint's in a funk. Bruce talks to him about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drinking with Intent

“Bruce!” Tony shouted as he walked into the lab Bruce was working in by himself on a Saturday night (because Bruce just refused to learn from that particular mistake).  
“What, Tony?” Bruce asked.  
“Bruce,” Tony said standing in front of Bruce with his hands on his hips, “your whatever-the-hell is trying to drink himself to death in the common room and I need you to talk to him.”  
“Tony,” Bruce said looking up from his work, “you're making less sense than usual. What do you mean my ‘whatever-the hell?’ You can say ‘friend’ Tony.”  
“If I may, Dr. Banner,” a robotic voice said from seemingly nowhere, “Sir, noticed that master Barton had consumed a rather large amount of alcohol while in a depressed state and thought that you would be the one best qualified to talk him down as it were due to the unique nature of your relationship with him.” Bruce decided that it just wasn’t worth arguing with Tony over semantics (according to Tony, they made goo – goo eyes at each other all time) and made his way from the lab to the common room.  
What he saw definitely made him agree with Tony about Clint drinking himself to death. Or at least a bitch of a hangover. The TV was on painfully loud (for Bruce) meaning that Clint's hearing aids were either on the fritz or just turned off. There were several bottles of what could have been hard liquor were on the table in front of him.  
“JARVIS,” Bruce said, "could you dim the lights and then bring them back up for me?"  
"Of course, sir," JARVIS said as he did just that. Clint must have gotten the hint, because he turned the volume on the TV way down. Bruce sat down on the sofa -- far enough away that another (very small) person could fit between them, but close enough so that Clint could hopefully tell that Bruce wanted to talk to him. Now that he was on the sofa and the volume wasn't so loud, he noticed that the TV was playing a special on the Chitari attack.  
"Six months already," Bruce asked, as loud as he could.  
"Hm?" Clint asked, cocking his head. Bruce pointed at the TV and said,  
"Six months?" Bruce asked again while he point  
"Yup," Clint said as he brought a bottle of something to his lips.  
"I think you've had enough," Bruce said, slowly putting his hand on the bottle to lower it.  
"Those were pretty much empty when I got here." Of course Bruce knew that, based on the sizes and shapes of the bottles on the coffee table that "pretty much empty" could mean anywhere from a shot to a tumbler--in other words more than enough.  
"Have you seen Tony?" Bruce asked.  
"No," Clint said, "are you looking for him?"  
"No," Bruce said. And here came the hard part. "But he's seen you and he's worried about you."  
"He's worried about me?" Clint asked and boy did he sound like shit. "Tony Stark is actually worried about someone who isn't himself or Pepper?"  
"Yeah," Bruce said. And then: "Should he be?  
"What?"  
"He saw you with all this alcohol and he got it into his head that you were trying to drink yourself to death." Bruce put air quotes around the words drink yourself to death.  
"Tempting," Clint said, "but no."  
"You know," Bruce said, "that wouldn't bring anyone back."  
"I know," Clint said, "but it might, I dunno, make amends or something."  
"Do you really believe that?" Bruce asked.  
"Do you really believe that if you killed yourself right now that that would make everything alright? That the best you can do to make the world a better place would be to kill yourself? You don't me right now-- or ever, but you really should ask yourself."


End file.
